The Lost Knight of Arabia

by Barbara Baldwin

  He patted his face dry with the less than clean towel and sighed. Her passion was contagious, and for the first time in too long, Jake was willing to take a chance. After all, he had no life plan of his own. He wondered where she would take him.

  “You can’t go tearing across the country by yourself.” He had heard enough of her words to realize she wanted to chase down the river after the Arabia.

  “You’re not my keeper. Sometimes you can’t even take care of yourself.”

  He knew she referred to last night’s incident. “I had that under control, no thanks to your interference. You’re the one who doesn’t appear to know the slightest thing about how the world works and can find trouble with your eyes closed.”

  He could see his words hit home. Her lips trembled; her eyes luminous. He hoped to God those weren’t tears he saw. He took a step toward her but she put up a hand, palm out.

  “You’re selfish and self-centered and don’t care about anyone or anything. Sometimes I don’t think you care if you live or die.”

  Days ago, she would have been right. Now, he knew different and it was because of her. She had made him change. He started to tell her that, but she didn’t give him a chance.

  “You’re a gambler and a…a gunslinger.”

  He laughed; he couldn’t help it. He wasn’t sure what she thought to accomplish by calling him names, but that certainly didn’t do it. “Carrying a pistol for protection hardly qualifies me for so eloquent a title.”

  His good humor only incited her. She narrowed her eyes; she fumed. Spinning on her heel, she slammed out the door. Minutes later, he watched out the window as she stepped into the street. Hesitating, she glanced around, one hand on her slim hip and the other shading her eyes.

  A furtive movement further down and across the street drew Jake’s attention to two men, leaning against the porch poles but eyeing Brianna. With a sigh and more regret than he could imagine, he grabbed his hat and coat and took off after her.

  “I thought you wanted to stay in town and gamble your life away.” Her greeting told him she was still angry. He supposed he should apologize, but he wasn’t sure what he had said was wrong.

  “There’s no money to be made here,” he said instead. Not wanting to brood on how she’d made him feel again, and what he would like to do to her if only they were alone, he concentrated instead on an earlier comment she had made.

  “Why are you so frantic about catching up with the steamer?” For himself, it mattered not whether he went upstream or down. “It will be around again in a few weeks, heading back to St. Louis.”

  “No, it won’t,” she cried.

  He took her elbow and steered her across the street and in the opposite direction of the men he had seen. Apparently seeing as she was attached, they pushed off the posts and meandered back into the saloon.

  He continued cajoling Brianna, for there was nothing worse than a woman’s tears. “It always comes back; has for at least the past two years I’ve been riding the river. I can’t see where it would be any different now.”

  “What am I to do?” She cried piteously. “It’s the only hope I have, though I don’t even know for sure that will work.”

  He had no idea of what she spoke but could sense her panic and perhaps could even understand a little. After all, he had always known she belonged somewhere, even if she had not told him exactly where when he’d fished her out of the Missouri. He hadn’t questioned her and had just ignored the evidence that she didn’t belong here. For himself, he no longer had a belonging, a place to call home, and that was fine for him. Brianna was different.

  When she wouldn’t stop crying, Jake folded her gently in his arms. Oddly enough, when she laid her head on his shoulder, it felt right.

  “I’ll find a way. We’ll hitch a ride on a wagon and be to the next town before the Arabia docks.”

  Chapter 10

  The dream has returned, although different this time. I had never had dreams as vivid and upsetting before I moved into my great-aunt’s house in Boston. From the first, I thought it was just because the house was old, but the dreams persisted and had gotten stronger and more frequent once I had decided to work on the Arabia excavation. Last night, I vividly saw the pages of the magazine opened to a two-page spread of the Steamboat Arabia. Are the dreams what led me to the Arabia, or are they somehow connected to Jake? Have the dreams begun again because I was temporarily separated from the Arabia when Jake and I missed the boat at Waverly?

  The dream may have been prompted by recent events, but it is the man from the dream that is the most stunning. Tall, lean and dark haired, he has invaded my dreams from the beginning but was never quite clear enough to see. His deep voice and rumbling words were always indistinguishable. But this time, he was familiar, achingly so…

  I’m lost. There’s no doubt about it and I don’t even want to think about what that means. I feel as if I’m floating between two worlds. Both are at once familiar and foreign and I have no idea what to do about it. Am I actually dreaming this whole adventure?

  If the Arabia didn’t sink, I wouldn’t have been at the archeological dig and therefore wouldn’t have come here. I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to get back to my present, I can’t change history. But is that huge, world-view history, or personal history? I can manage to leave the world history alone, but yeah, my personal history has certainly changed.

  Bri shot straight up in bed; gasping and shaking uncontrollably. She knew her eyes were open but the pitch black of night eliminated any chance that she could see. Sweat trickled down her back as she tried to find a landmark to anchor herself.

  “It was just a dream,” she whispered, her throat scratchy. Hugging a pillow to her chest, rocking quietly, she reached over to turn on the lamp at her bedside, only to find none. It took long seconds to realize she wasn’t in her own home in Boston, or even in a bed in a strange town, but on board the Arabia.

  “Are you all right?” His movement was only a shift in the air and she wondered if he was part of her dream. She shivered in awareness.

  “You’re here?” Was she speaking to the man in her dream, or a ghost? With a shaking hand, she brushed the hair out of her eyes.

  “Of course. Well, yes, I am here at the moment.” He sat beside her and took her hand, brushing his fingers down her cheek.

  She wavered, trying to separate dream from reality. Yet there was something intimately familiar in his profile, in the way he leaned toward her to press a gentle kiss to her brow before she felt the mattress give as he stood.

  “Don’t go.” She twined her fingers with his to keep him beside her. She couldn’t explain the dream, but didn’t want to slide back into it again.

  She turned, her lips searching in the dark for him. She skimmed kisses along his jaw, rough from a day’s whiskers. He groaned but didn’t retreat and she grew bolder, laying a hand on his thigh as her mouth settled on his.

  That was not the right word, she hazily thought as she drowned in the sweetness, which turned quickly to heat. Her heart, definitely not quiet or settled, pounded so loudly he had to hear. Jake was the one constant in a world turned awry. His lips were firm, and hot, and though she had initiated the kiss, he swiftly took over. She was so tired of trying to understand, to control, even to dare hope things would return to normal once they reached Parkville, so she happily gave herself over to his care.

  Something had led Jake back to the stateroom that evening, though he didn’t usually spend any more time than necessary in Brianna’s presence. Now he knew why. It seemed as though he had wanted her forever, and he had fought against it. Now, his tongue skimmed along the seam of her lips, seducing, until she opened for him. She was more than he had imagined – soft and hot, like molten silk beneath his questing tongue. She had driven him crazy with her good deeds, but now he realized it was her very presence that drove him to distraction. He brought an arm around her shoulders and bore her back onto the bed, never releasing her lips from his. His
hand shook slightly as it slid up her ribcage to where her breast filled his palm with soft flesh; shook because he was trying to contain his urgency; shook because it had been far too long since he had felt a beautiful woman beneath him.

  He didn’t want to rush. Indeed, he wanted to savor every moment, every touch. Her hands pushed and jerked until his coat fell away. She tugged his shirt from his trousers and her hot hands skimmed up his bare back. Even then he might have been able to maintain some degree of control but for her gasping breath and her needy, “Hurry. Please.”

  He gathered her nightclothes up, up and over her head. There was little light coming through the window from the sliver of moon, but it was enough to have him stop and wonder. She was beautiful…no, more than that. A Greek goddess; a siren. Her hair spilled across the pillow in a wave of gold, framing her face and cascading over her shoulders. She had a body made for loving. High, firm breasts, a narrow waist, and soft curving thighs that beckoned a man to settle between them. He lifted a tendril of hair from the curve of her breast and, twining it around his finger, bent to kiss her pale skin.

  Her shiver made him bold. Skimming his tongue along the gentle swell of flesh, he circled slowly, closing in on the peak. His teeth grazed the erect and quivering nipple before he sucked it deeper, laving it with his tongue, fighting to hold her when she squirmed beneath him.

  Some things a man never forgot, he mused. Like a woman’s fragrance; the smell of arousal that had his heart beating rapidly in his chest and had his hands seeking the treasure that was uniquely female. He cupped her, sliding a finger deep into her heat to tease and to explore. And to send her soaring. As his thumb rubbed the little nub of her femininity, she moaned his name, lifting her hips to draw him even closer.

  “Now,” she whimpered, her hands clawing at him, trying to drag him over her.

  Though Jake wanted to finish her; to know he could still give a woman the ultimate pleasure, he was throbbing almost painfully and didn’t know how long he could hold off. That moment came when she managed to undo his trousers. He added a little pressure to his explorations and was rewarded by her cry; just before she latched onto his shaft with a hot, sliding hand.

  As quickly as his shaking hands allowed, he jerked down his trousers and slid between her welcoming legs. While he would have gone slowly, not knowing her experience, the moment the tip of his shaft touched her outer lips, she heaved up her hips, clamped onto his backside, and took him fully. He wondered if he had died and gone to heaven.

  * * *

  Bri sighed, knowing she wouldn’t change a thing about what they had done. Jake had tried to be gentle, but she hadn’t wanted consideration, or tenderness. She had craved the mindless bliss he had given her, yet she knew she had satisfied him in turn. Her lips curved in a smile. She hadn’t even given him time to completely remove his trousers.

  She tucked the whole experience into the back of her mind, to take out later and relive. Later, when he was no longer lying at her side, or when she was no longer here on the Arabia. While there was no doubt she would share his bed for however long she was here, that didn’t solve her problem.

  Her brain hurt trying to figure out the impossibilities of how she got here, why she was here, and whether she could get back.

  “What’s wrong?” Jake rolled toward her and circled her waist with a strong, bare arm. She didn’t realize she had groaned out loud.

  His warm hand caressed her bare midriff and slowly, sensuously slid upward to cup her breast until she couldn’t think at all.

  “Did I hurt you?” he asked, his breath tickling her ear. “Was I too rough?”

  Bri almost laughed. The first time had been a maniacal rush headlong over a cliff with neither of them bothering with finesse. The last, Jake had so tenderly taken her to the heights of ecstasy she had almost felt as though he were a phantom lover, reminding her of the dream she had recently had.

  “Just thinking,” she murmured.

  He gave a short laugh. “I have to concentrate just on breathing. You have a way of making me forget even that.”

  She rolled over to look at him. Through the early morning haze sifting through the small cabin window, she could almost see a resemblance to the man in her dreams. Was that the connection? Had she somehow come here because of her dreams; because Jake had called to her over the ripples of time? But why had she come to him?

  She had assumed her presence on the Arabia was directly connected to the excavation in which she had been participating. She twisted the tiny ring she wore on her pinkie. Now, she wondered if it was Jake, not the Arabia; or perhaps because Jake was on the Arabia. It was just too confusing.

  “Brianna, where are your thoughts?”

  “Hmm?”

  He pulled her closer and she could feel his erection against her thigh.

  “Here I am trying to seduce you, and you seem a hundred miles away.”

  More like a hundred years.

  She lightly kissed his chin. “Perhaps you weren’t trying hard enough.” She smiled into eyes the color of green fields in summer. “Perhaps you need to try harder.”

  He growled and she found herself flat on her back with his hips wedged between her thighs.

  “I am as hard as a hickory stick and aching so that I am liable to burst if you don’t come back to me and let me love you.”

  “Kiss me, Jake, and quit talking so much.”

  He obliged, his lips firm and hot on hers and she gave herself up to the wonder of him. She slid her hands across his broad shoulders and down his back, feeling the muscles quiver in the wake of her massaging fingers. As she caressed his spine and moved lower still, she raised her knees and planted her feet flat on the bed, lifting her hips to his.

  He deepened the kiss, his tongue seeking entry but it was a penetration of a different kind that had her aching. As wet and ready as she was, he still stole her breath. Slowly, as his tongue dueled with hers, he captured her body, inch after luscious inch.

  * * *

  They lay in a rumpled heap of sheets and covers; exhausted and yet too wound up to sleep. At least she was. Turning her head slightly, she studied Jake’s profile. His eyes were closed, his lips curved in a satisfied smile. So like a male, she thought. His hair, normally combed back in a distinguished manner, curled over his ears and dark locks fell over his forehead. He looked like a little boy, silently savoring a stolen candy or bit of adventure. She laughed lightly, for it had been more than just a bit of adventure.

  “Are you laughing at the fact I think I have died?” He turned his head, trying for a one eyed stare, but he was anything but ferocious.

  His words reminded her of the ghost and her smile immediately faded.

  “What is it, Brianna?” He propped himself on an elbow, head in hand, and used the other to turn her chin so she could do nothing but look at him.

  “A dream I keep having,” she began, and tried to turn away but he held her firm. With a sigh, she determined she might as well tell him, at least some of it.

  “It always took place in my house; my bed, in Boston, but not last night.” She scanned the small cabin and felt…something she couldn’t put a finger on. She shivered and Jake drew her closer.

  “Sh, it’s all right now. I have you.” His voice was so like what she had heard in her dream. Perhaps she was foisting Jake’s characteristics onto her ghost because Jake was familiar to her.

  Why me? She wondered silently. She believed in ghosts; she just didn’t fear them. Her auntie had often spoken of a ghost that she thought haunted the house, but in all the years Bri visited in her youth, she had never had occasion to confront it.

  “There was a magazine article, about the Arabia,” she started, but hesitated because the article had been about the unearthing of the Arabia, not about its travels on the Missouri River.

  In her mind, she saw the pages of the magazine flutter. Somehow everything in this was connected, yet she couldn’t for the life of her figure it out.

  “It does
n’t matter,” she said instead. It wasn’t hard to summon a smile and forget the dream; forget the life she had mysteriously left behind. Especially when Jake’s warm hand drifted to her hips to tug her against him. She gave up the struggle and surrendered to his charms.

  Chapter 11

  Jake has been staying on board at night. Though he still wanders to the gentlemen’s parlor to play a hand or two of cards, he most generally stays close. He has escorted me to dinner in the opulent dining room; taken time to talk to me, although we speak only in general terms about general topics. He still refuses to tell me why he continues a nomad’s life, and I of course, cannot tell him the why of being here, much less the how of it all. We make love every night and he stays, resting beside me with an arm always wrapped around me.

  This interlude is making me actually think about what it would be like to stay in this time. I don’t know what I would do; I have no useful skills in this century, yet a part of me yearns to stay and discover—no, live--history first hand. Even as those thoughts frighten me, I find I’m in love with Jake. I know beneath the gruff exterior beats a gentle heart. There is just so little time – only days. Yet I know, across a hundred years or more, he will always have my heart.

  The small cabin has been my refuge, but today the walls close in and I panic. I don’t know whether I will even have the opportunity to stay here. Nothing will be certain until we reach Parkville and the Arabia hits the snag. For now, I have to get off the boat, if only for a little while.

  The early evening breeze blew across the gentle slope of the riverbank as Captain Terrill maneuvered the Arabia up to the dock at Lexington. The weather was mild, as usual for September. Trees along the riverbank were still lush with green. Bri was grateful that, while the Arabia had been excavated in cold, wet winter, it had sank in early fall. She had a hard time imagining traveling the river in winter. She stood at the rail with the rest of the passengers, as anxious to disembark as they, but probably for very different reasons.